Happy Birthday to Ken Phelps, 60. For five years, he was a monster at the plate (OPS+ 149, 120, 152. 147, 162). It never convinced anyone to give him 500 PAs, and he was pretty much out of baseball the first time he slumped from his peak. Not that he was going to be more valuable than Jay Buhner going forward, though. If he came up today there's a good chance he would get 400 home runs, not 123. Baseball people still make mistakes, but rarely like that

2. Two fascinating points from Greg Sargent: several key Senate contests are in states with some of the biggest declines in the number of uninsured, and the avalanche of anti-Affordable Care Act ads doesn't seem to be moving the dial.

5. While Jonathan Cohn looks at the trend in 2015 ACA premiums, and finds a lot of normal increases -- showing another round of scare stories were wrong -- but he also finds some interesting state variation.

6. And Jared Bernstein delves into the question of why the economy (over the long run) has done better with Democratic presidents than with Republicans, and doesn't come up with any answers beyond luck.

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